SereneAmbition
Click to view larger image Click to view larger image Click to view larger image
SereneAmbition
Jan 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
       
1
3
4
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
             

How Can They Do That...?!

Friday Nov 28 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
I got another shot of what has been a curiosity to me for a long time: the growing practice of ‘texting’. This practice was highlighted for me when I read that Barack Obama has to kick his Blackberry habit in his new job and again when I was at the theater earlier this week with an audience of mostly 20 and 30-year-olds. Both before the curtain and at the intermission, I counted about 30 folks fixated on their ‘mobile communication devices’. Several were even covertly ‘peeking’ during the performance. I don’t think I am a Luddite, yet somehow this seemed[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: balance choice communication relationship texting

Life at the Growing Edge

Tuesday Oct 28 2008

   By Shae Hadden | Bio
Several years ago, a wise 93-year-old man named Hayden shared with me his principles for living life “at the growing edge”. He had printed them on cards, in the shape of a bookmark, and distributed them to everyone who engaged in meaningful conversation with him. Today, as I’m recovering from the first major surgery I’ve ever had, I was drawn to reflect on a couple of them again. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I shared them with you now:[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: choice compassion growing health letting_go responsibility

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Friday Oct 17 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
Think about the positive attributes of growing older, and ‘wisdom’ will always appear near the top of the list. Until recently, I had assumed ‘wisdom’ was a kind of ‘right knowledge’. Every time someone says the Serenity Prayer, I am reminded of this attribute again.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I wonder if I do know the difference.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: action change choice judgment serenity service wisdom

Guilt

Monday Aug 25 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
I have been talking about ‘completion’ a lot lately. It is basically that state of being where we can let the past be in the past and not try to control everything to make the future turn out the way we want it. Completion is a necessary state if we want live in the present. One of the things that keeps us from being complete is guilt. Guilt is a waste of time. It is blaming ourselves for whatever we think we’ve done wrong. As far as I can tell, it is also a cover-up for not being responsible for whatever we did that we’re feeling guilty about.[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: blame choice completion guilt judgment responsibility

Circumstantial Drift

Friday Aug 08 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio
One of the biggest questions most of us have is “Why do we do what we do?”, particularly when what we do isn’t what we want to do or think we should be doing.  My answer is that, for most of us, most of the time we’re not actually choosing what we do. We are living our life according to our historical patterns within some narrowly proscribed personal and cultural ‘story’ about what is and is not possible and what our options are in any given situation. In effect, we live our lives in a ‘circumstantial drift’ where the future is determined by our past.[Read More]

Written by admin at Retirement

Tagged with: choice circumstantial_drift future past retirement time

Tradition and Heritage

Tuesday Jul 15 2008

   By Jim Selman | Bio


I was listening to a lecture today on the philosopher Martin Heidegger. He is pretty difficult to understand at the best of times, even though I have been a student of his thinking for many years. The lecture today spoke of the distinction he made between ‘tradition’, which he felt was a bad thing, and ‘heritage’, which he thought was a good thing. In fact, he felt heritage was essential to understanding the true nature of ‘Being’.[Read More]

Written by admin at Wisdom in Action

Tagged with: being choice heidigger heritage tradition wisdom_in_action

The World We Want: It Begins with a Conversation

Tuesday Jun 24 2008

By David Korten | Great Turning website

Read more posts in The World We Want series.

How does it happen? It starts with a conversation. A while back, Cecile Andrews, our local Seattle author of The Circle of Simplicity, explained to me how the women’s movement changed the story on gender and unleashed the long suppressed power of the feminine. It started with discussion circles in which women came together to share personal stories. As each woman spoke her truth, a larger truth was revealed for all to see. The prevailing story that the key to a woman’s happiness is to find the right man, marry him, and devote her life to his service was not true.[Read More]

Written by admin at The Great Turning

Tagged with: choice conversation responsibility voluntary_simplicity womens_movement

Slowing Down

Friday Jun 06 2008

My neighbor and good friend is moving to an apartment without stairs in another city where there’s a better environment for retirees and a more laid-back lifestyle. She tells me that she is ‘slowing down’. I am sure she is making the right decision for her—stairs have become difficult following hip surgery last year. And I am sure she knows that our choice of wording reveals some of the bias hidden in our cultural predisposition to the future. To be sure, we hear a lot of people declaring that they’re slowing down. Yet, I wonder what ‘slowing down’ really means?

[Read More]

Written by admin at Fearless Aging

Tagged with: choice future lifestyle reality retirement slowing_down

The World We Want: What If We All Wanted the Same Thing?

Tuesday May 27 2008

By David Korten | Great Turning website

Read more posts in The World We Want series.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it turned out the choices we must make together to survive together are the same choices we must make to create the very world most of all the world’s people want? If that were case, then we should be able to just get together and make it happen. Wouldn’t that be cool? Maybe we should start a conversation to find out what people truly want…[Read More]

Written by admin at The Great Turning

Tagged with: choice compassion conversation cooperation earth_charter

Working Longer

Friday May 23 2008

According to Professor Yarrow, a history professor at American University, it is unpatriotic to retire while you are still in good health.
"Retiring when you're still in good health isn't just wrong, it's profoundly selfish and unpatriotic...Dropping out of the workforce while still in one's prime means ending one's contributions to America's strength, mortgaging our children's and grandchildren's future, and leeching trillions of taxpayer dollars from the economy... If millions of Americans worked until age 67 instead of 62...[they] would increase national output and personal wealth and keep the labor force at a healthy level."
[Read More]

Written by admin at Retirement

Tagged with: choice eldering future guilt participating responsibility retirement working

Font size
SereneAmbition

Search Blog

SereneAmbition
SereneAmbition

Email Subscription

SereneAmbition